Seen "Ghost Town"? Why the hell not?

Turning now to the cinema, here's a plug for Ghost Town, the finest comedy of 2008. Too bad nobody bothered to see it during its brief run in theaters.

The wife and I watched it last night, courtesy of Netflix and my great big 52-inch television. Ricky Gervais is not precisely the same character he played in the original The Office and Extras, but his role as a dentist named Bertram Pincus isn't quite a departure, either: a veneer of British civility stretched way too thin over a fundamentally misanthropic personality.

After a colonoscopy complication leaves him clinically dead for seven minutes, Dr. Pincus finds himself beset by a variety of spirits who want him to help complete their unfinished business in the physical world. Complications ensue. It's Sixth Sense with a sense of humor -- and surprisingly, a bit of genuine poignance at the end.

Ghost Town was hawked heavily in trailers and TV spots before its release; usually this means you see the funniest parts so often that the movie itself feels like a rerun. Here, the ads don't do the film justice. The biggest laughs come not from the sight gags but the deft dialogue. SNL's Kristin Wiig has a slight role as a clueless doctor, but she delivers some of the film's biggest laughs.

Four thumbs up here. Dave Bob says rent it now.

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
"After a colonoscopy complication leaves him clinically dead for seven minutes,"

That's the best sentence fragment I've read all day.
January 4, 2009 at 2:31 PM
Dave Knadler said…
It's that kind of movie. It really is a nice change from the crap we usually see in the holiday comedy genre.
January 4, 2009 at 7:33 PM
Unknown said…
I LOVED this movie. I found it clever, witty, and just plain funny! I've been trying to get people to watch since it opened in theaters. Not sure why the lack of interest.
January 6, 2009 at 1:30 AM
Dave Knadler said…
Maybe the title? I don't know. But I'm going to go out on a limb and predict this will become a classic, like "Groundhog Day" and "A Christmas Story."
January 6, 2009 at 4:05 PM
J. Kingston Pierce said…
On your recommendation, my wife and I watched Ghost Town last night. Loved it! I never thought I'd find Ricky Gervais an endearing character, but this film showed me he could be just that. And of course, it also features Greg Kinnear and the lovely Tea Leoni--both of whom are eminently watchable. This may not be a great movie, but it's certainly memorable. I look forward to seeing it again sometime.

Cheers,
Jeff
January 7, 2009 at 12:19 PM
Dave Knadler said…
I probably set the bar a little low when it comes to comedies -- it's so rare to find one that's funny. But I almost watched it again before sending it back to Netflix. For me, that makes it a classic.
January 7, 2009 at 12:41 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$
Read more